probable that if we had met them we should have got no information of
value from them. When wild natives can be induced to approach and
speak to the first travellers who trespass on their domains, they
simply repeat, as well as they can, every word and action of the
whites; this becomes so annoying that it is better to be without them.
When they get to be more intimate and less nervous they also generally
become more familiar, and want to see if white people are white all
over, and to satisfy their curiosity in many ways. This region
evidently does not support a very numerous tribe, and there is not
much game in it. I have never visited any part of Australia so devoid
of animal life.

On the 10th of September everything was ready, and I departed,
declaring that:--

"Though the scrubs may range around me,
My camel shall bear me on;
Though the desert may surround me,
It hath springs that shall be won."

Mounting my little fairy camel Reechy, I "whispered to her westward,
westward, and with speed she darted onward." The morning was cloudy
and cool, and I anticipated a change from the quite sufficiently hot
weather we had lately had, although I did not expect rain. We had no
notion of how far we might have to go, or how many days might elapse
before we came to any other water, but we left our friendly little dam
in high hopes and excellent spirits, hoping to discover not only
water, but some more agreeable geographical features than we had as
yet encountered. I had set my own and all my companions' lives upon a
cast, and will stand the hazard of the die, and I may add that each
one displayed at starting into the new unknown, the greatest desire
and eagerness for our attempt. On leaving the depot I had determined
to travel on a course that would enable me to reach the 30th parallel
of latitude at about its intersection with the 125th meridian of
longitude; for I thought it probable the scrubs might terminate sooner
in that direction than in one more northerly. Our course was therefore
on a bearing of south 76 degrees west; this left the line of salt
lakes Alec Ross and I had formerly visited, and which lay west, on our
right or northwards of us. Immediately after the start we entered
thick scrubs as usual; they were mostly composed of the black oak,
casuarina, with mulga and sandal-wood, not of commerce. We passed by
the edge of two small salt depressions at six and nine miles; at ten
miles we were overta